Delphix and Data Masking 5/4/2016

Last week I had the opportunity to attend a presentation on Data Masking. The presentation was conducted by one of our strategic technology partners, Delphix. I found the presentation very interesting and worthy to blog about.

Data Masking

The Business Problem

Most firms have a deluge of data that is continuing to plague drive cost upward for most organizations. If a firm is governed by regulatory requirements, such as HIPPA, 17-A4, Gramm-leach Bilily, PCI the need to protect and secure the data takes on a new approach.

While thinking about security, most people focusing on the perimeter of their environment. Trying to put a wall up and stop intruders from coming in. This method is effective for those outside the firewall. Most people don’t realize that 70% of most security breaches occur inside (internally) within their own environment.

What is Data Masking?

Data Masking is the process of taking sensitive, confidential data and replacing it with fictitious, yet realistic, data. As a part of this process, metadata and data is scanned to identify the relationships between data elements so that data can be masked consistently and referential integrity is preserved. Thus, if “John Doe” appears in multiple fields, it would be consistently converted to “Jim Smith” across all fields. “Jane Doe” might then be converted to “Joan Smith,” to also observe the “Doe”→ “Smith” conversion rule. In other words, the referential integrity of the data is preserved to allow application functionality to be tested as it would be using unmasked data.

Data Masking Provides Many Benefits in terms of Security & Application development, Here are a few.

•Alert administrators if vulnerabilities are discovered and deliver risk assessments to auditors

Secure Data in Minutes with Data as a Service From Delphix

One of the reasons why I like the Delphix solution for data masking is because Delphix seamlessly integrates masking with Data As A Surface on premises or into private and public clouds to this will enable you to: